With the closure of the English Language Institute, Pitt needs to find an alternative to teach students English

Led by a team of student mentors, Global Ties hosts events to help international students make friends, learn American traditions, explore Pittsburgh and acclimate to life in the United States. This fall is the first fully in-person semester for Global Ties since spring 2020.

Since Yitian Wang founded Pitt-China Weekly this February, the news channel is making the nearly 7,000-mile distance from Pitt to China feel a little shorter for Chinese international students and their parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Megan McCann, along with many other Pitt students, traveled overseas during winter break to see her family after COVID-19 delayed her travel plans from earlier in 2020. “Being back in Guam is so good. I just want to stay forever.”

Pitt submitted comments on Oct. 27 opposing new visa requirements proposed by the Trump administration. The document, signed by Provost Ann Cudd, said the rules are “unnecessary” and “harmful” and called on the federal government to immediately withdraw them.

Morales led a discussion Friday afternoon about her article covering the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis. The article was published in Panoramas, Pitt’s online, student-led publication dedicated to news, research, culture and art of Latin America, the Caribbean and Latinx Caribbean diasporas.

The new rules published on Sept. 25 by the Department of Homeland Security — which would affect many of Pitt’s more than 3,100 international students — seek to create fixed terms of up to four years for student visas, as well as new applications for international students to extend their stay in the United States.

Pitt filed an amicus brief on Monday supporting Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s lawsuit against the Trump administration.

International students at Pitt say they are gravely concerned over new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidelines announced Monday, which would force them to leave the country if the University moves classes online only for the fall.

More than 1,000 people have signed an open letter penned by four graduate students in the English department to Pitt’s administration urging the University to take swift action.